Search Worlds Without End

In the far reaches of space, a tour group embarks on what will be the trip of a lifetime--in more ways than one...

At Sigma Station, a remote mining facility and luxury hotel in deep space, a group of tourists boards a small vessel to take in the stunning views of the Horsehead Nebula.

But while they're out there, a mysterious ship with devastating advanced technology attacks the station. Their pilot's quick thinking means that the tourists escape with their lives--but as the dust settles, they realise they may be the only survivors...

Adrift in outer space on a vastly under-equipped ship, they've got no experience, no weapons, no contact with civilisation. They are way out of their depth, and if they can't figure out how to work together, they're never getting home alive.

Because the ship that destroyed the station is still out there. And it's looking for them...

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Constellations: The Best of New British SF (2005), edited by Peter Crowther. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 11 (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer. The story is included in the collections Zima Blue and Other Stories (2006) and Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds (2016).

From Pirate to Emperor... - Young Brandon Arkad has been brought by war and disaster to a duty he never expected: Pananch of the Thousand Suns, Emperor of the human worlds beyond the Rift. But his Empire is in shambles, as the implacable Jerrod Eusabian and his Rifter allies continue to pillage whole planets, and the Emerald Throne is out of reach on occupied Arthelion. The surviving nobility of the Panarchy have gathered aboard Ares, the headquarters of the Panarchic Fleet. Now Brandon must grasp the power given him in the moment of his father's death, and wield it to wrest his empire from the hands of the usurper. But he must win the faith of his people before he can hope to win a war, and that will not be easy. For there is a traitor at the heart of the Panarchy, thwarting Brandon's every move with poisonous rumor and murderous plots - a traitor at the center of Brandon's councils, close enough to be invisible - a traitor who will stop at nothing to destroy the Arkad dynasty.

They have gathered now on Damien and are about to witness the last rising of a manmade nova. They are 16 humans in a distant world about to be enveloped by an eruption of violence--horror and murder oddly complemented by a bizarre unforgiving love. But justice is not all that's about to be found. Judgment is coming and the 16 unsuspecting ones are on the threshold of the murdered star.

Table of Contents:

• In the Great Central Library of Deneb University - (1986)
• The Only Neat Thing to Do - (1985)
• Good Night, Sweethearts - (1986)
• Collision - (1986)